Barack Obama, Health Care | featured news

Republican Paul Ryan's blueprint for Medicare could prove as polarizing in the campaign as President Barack Obama's health care overhaul has been. Even Mitt Romney may not want to go there....

Romney's latest problem with conservatives flowed from a spokeswoman's reflections this week on the benefits of the Massachusetts health care law. That Romney-proposed law remains a touchy topic, since it was a model for President Barack Obama's health care overhaul — which Romney now condemns. In criticizing an outside group's ad linking Romney to the cancer death of a laid-off steelworker's wife, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul told Fox News, "If people had been in Massachusetts under Gov. Romney's health care plan, they would have had health care."

President Obama is now happy to call it "Obamacare." Once a term of derision used mostly by Republicans who have vowed to repeal the new health care law, Obama deployed it in both of his Colorado appearances on Wednesday. "The Affordable Care Act -- also known as Obamacare," Obama said to applause from backers at the University of Denver.

"I actually like the name," he added. "Because I do care -- that's why we fought so hard to make it happen."

The White House casts today's House Republican vote to repeal the health care law as a waste of time while Americans are hurting economically. "We do not need to refight the battles of two years ago, three years ago," said White House spokesman Jay Carney. "We need to help the American economy now." The GOP-run House is likely to support repeal of Obama's health law with a vote this afternoon. The repeal proposal would go nowhere in the Democratic-run Senate... Carney said that, by his count, this is the 33rd time that congressional Republicans have voted to repeal or defund health care. He says the GOP is engaged in "a quixotic effort to try and score political points.

Mitt Romney's campaign is aligning itself with President Barack Obama—and breaking from Republican leaders—by saying the government will be imposing a penalty, not a tax, on people who don't buy insurance as required by the new health-care law. The break from his Republican allies illustrates the difficulty the presumptive GOP presidential nominee faces in criticizing the president for a national health-care law that resembles the one Mr. Romney signed as Massachusetts governor. Both laws include a requirement that most individuals buy insurance coverage.

Voter support for President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul has increased following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling upholding it, although majorities still oppose it, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday showed. Among all registered voters, support for the law rose to 48 percent in the online survey conducted after Thursday's ruling, up from 43 percent before the court decision. Opposition slipped to 52 percent from 57 percent.

Presidents live in a world of wins and losses quickly forgotten. Rarely are they presented with the kind of defining moment that President Barack Obama experienced when the Supreme Court upheld his health care law.

Americans are split down the middle on the Supreme Court's decision to uphold President Obama's health care law.

President Barack Obama's health care overhaul is on the way to its ultimate jury: the families, doctors, business people and state officials who'll have to grapple with the confusing details while striving to fulfill its promise....

Just hours after the Supreme Court upheld President Obama's health care law, his campaign put out a video trumpeting the legislation.